Nothing to See Here

by Kevin Wilson

  “It’s just a risk/reward kind of thing, you know?” she told me. We didn’t talk about that night between us, not a word. We didn’t act like it hadn’t happened. That would have been bullshit. But we acted like if we talked about it, it would only keep happening, the same result, the same pain, and what was the point of that?

  “I do want them to watch it all, though,” she said. “And read them the newspapers, okay? I want them to appreciate their father. I think it might help, if they see how important he is.”

  “They know he’s important, Madison,” I told her. “They don’t think they’re important.”

  “Well,” she said, “you have to make them think otherwise.”

  “That’s all I’ve been doing, okay?” I said, getting angry.

  “Let’s not fight,” she said, reaching to touch my arm, so calculated, her skin on mine. I let her hand sit there, like a butterfly on my arm, its wings beating just so.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Okay. You’re right. Okay.”

  “This is how the world works,” she told me, and she meant this was how her world worked, as if I didn’t already know. “Things are bad and crazy and chaotic. But you ride it out and you don’t let it hurt you, and then there’s this stretch of time that is so calm and perfect. And that’s what was always waiting for you.”

  “Okay,” I said, ready to be done with all this.

  “That’s what you tell them,” she said, removing her hand from my arm. “That’s what you get them to understand.”

  After we had lunch, the vote came in, no surprises, and Jasper Roberts, Bessie and Roland’s dad, was the new secretary of state of the United States of America. I finally turned on the volume, but it was just more words, nothing that really mattered.

  “Your dad did it,” I told them.

  “Well, okay,” Roland said.

  Bessie said, “I remember something,” and scattered index cards until she held up a name, Elihu B. Washburne. She flipped it over to the back, where there were one or two interesting facts that we’d written. She held it out to me.

  “This guy only did it for eleven days,” she told me. “Maybe Dad will be like that.”

  “Maybe,” I told her.

  And then, on the steps of the Capitol, there was this podium and all these people milling around. I sat on the sofa with the kids. I was looking for Madison, wanted to see what she was wearing. And then there was applause, and I saw all three of them, Jasper, Madison, and Timothy, walking to the podium. I saw Carl behind them, official and serious. Madison was holding Timothy, resting him on her hip. He had a little sports coat with an American flag pin on the lapel. Madison had on this tight maroon dress, like Jackie O or something. Jasper, who the hell cared, had on a boring-ass gray suit, but he looked handsome enough. They looked like a beautiful family, no denying it. They looked so complete, so compact, so perfect. We were here, and they were there, and this all made perfect sense to me.

  Jasper started to talk, and it was like when he prayed at dinner that night, just platitudes, like a computer program had written them based on phrases in the Bible and the Constitution mixed together. He talked about responsibility and protecting the country and yet also ensuring its growth and prosperity. He talked about his own military service, which I actually hadn’t known about. He talked about diplomacy, but I wasn’t watching any of that. I was looking over his shoulder, at Madison, who was beaming. She was stunning, the ease of her posture, how relaxed she was now that she had something she wanted. And resting on her shoulder, there was Timothy, who was making this weird face. He was frowning, like he heard a little sound that no one else could hear. And then, there was this noise, like a firework exploding, and someone gasped. For a second, I thought someone had been shot.

  Bessie and Roland stood up, focused on the screen. And all three of us could see it so clearly. It was right there.

  Timothy was on fire.

  He was completely ablaze, not like the popping and crackling, no little sparks. Real fire. Madison screamed, dropping him on the ground, out of sight of the camera. Her dress was smoking, just these little wisps of smoke rising off of her. Jasper didn’t seem to understand what was going on, kept looking ahead as if turning around would be a major sign of weakness, as if someone else would handle it. But now Madison was really screaming, and there was Carl, his jacket off, slapping the ground, where I imagined Timothy was. And finally the camera kind of moved, adjusted so that Jasper was now offscreen, who gave a fuck about him, and there was Timothy, kind of crouched on the ground, burning so perfectly, brilliantly burning. I could hear all these voices, but over the noise there was Jasper’s voice, distorted and angry, yelling Madison’s name over and over.

  “Holy shit,” Bessie and Roland said at the same time.

  And then, like magic, Timothy wasn’t on fire. He was fine. He was actually smiling, not a hair out of place. Carl wrapped him up in the jacket and lifted him into his arms, and some other men in suits and sunglasses kind of blocked everything off, and they all ran toward this long line of identical black cars. And the cars drove off. And that was it. They cut back to the studio, where a man in tweed looked like he’d eaten poison. He made this dry little hissing sound, like we hadn’t all just seen this kid on fire, and he said, “A historic day as the Senate confirms the appointment—”

  I looked over at the kids just as I felt the temperature of the room subtly shift. And they were rigid, staring at the screen, their eyes so wide. And even with the Nomex clothing, I could see them starting to burn. “Outside!” I shouted, because I knew that fucking breathing exercises were not going to work. I knew what was coming. But the kids weren’t moving, and now they were really smoking, and the air smelled like chemicals, so dense and acrid.

  “Bessie!” I shouted. “Roland! C’mon, kiddos. Let’s go outside.”

  I started pulling on them, and they finally seemed to snap out of it. They walked with me to the front door and we stepped outside, the weather so clear, so perfect. The sun was high up in the sky. Bessie and Roland walked onto the lawn. And they were laughing. They were laughing hard. And it was difficult to look at them, they were so bright, this white, blinding light. And then they were on fire, too, these vivid red and yellow flames. They stood there, burning. And I was happy. I knew they were okay. I knew that they couldn’t be hurt. The grass turned black at their feet, and the air around them turned shimmery. It was beautiful. They were beautiful.

  Inside the guesthouse, the phone was ringing, again and again and again, but I didn’t move. I looked across the lawn, and Mary was standing on the back porch, watching the children, completely unaffected, as if she were watching some ordinary birds at a feeder. I waved to her, and she waited for a few seconds before she waved back.

  The kids ran in circles, the flame trailing off of them and falling to the ground, where the grass caught fire for a second before it smoldered. They burned and burned, like they were eternal. But I knew that it would die down, that it would fade away, back inside them, wherever it hid. I knew that soon they would turn back into the kids I knew so well, their weird bodies and tics. I didn’t try to catch them or put them out. I let them burn. I sat on the porch, a perfect day, and watched them burn. Because I knew that when it was over, when the fire disappeared, they would come right back to me.

  Eleven

  We barely slept that night, so revved up, nothing we could do about it. The minute the sun rose, the kids jumped out of bed. The sheets were sticky from the fire gel, beyond saving, and the kids took turns in the shower to wash the rest of it off. I didn’t try to stop them. It seemed pointless. Either they’d burn the house down or they wouldn’t.

  When I’d finally answered the phone the day before, Carl, who sounded out of breath, said that they were coming home, driving back to Nashville. He said that Madison was handling damage control, that I wasn’t to talk to anyone. He told me to keep the kids inside the house, to cover them in fire gel. “Keep them safe, okay?” he said, and before
I could ask about Timothy, he hung up.

  Bessie and Roland wanted to see it again, over and over, Timothy on fire, but I unplugged the television, knew that it would only make it worse, that it was already burned onto the insides of our eyelids. Of course, I wondered what was going on outside of our house, what the newspapers would say, but I just pushed it out of my mind. I focused on these two kids.

  After they’d finally stopped burning, we’d peeled off the ruined Nomex and put on a fresh set of clothes. I’d made them sit on the sofa, dumped a bunch of apples on the coffee table, and we’d read three Penny Nichols novels, my voice droning and droning, working our way through the mystery to that moment when it all comes into the light. This was how we’d survive, huddled together, words on the page, the ending of one story just a moment of silence before a new story began. And we made it. The kids were happy. They had added another to their numbers. They didn’t want to set the world on fire. They just wanted to be less alone in it.

  It took some coaxing, but I got them to do thirty minutes of yoga, and while they ate cereal, I ran over to the mansion to get a copy of the newspaper. I could not imagine the angle, how the narrative would be assembled. I wanted to know if Bessie and Roland would be mentioned, to be prepared. I knocked on the back door until Mary opened it for me. “Do you want something to eat?” she asked, and I did kind of want a bacon sandwich, but I ignored that desire and got on with it.

  “I wanted to get a copy of the newspaper,” I told her. She stared at me, unblinking. I had no idea whether she knew about Timothy. I wanted to say something, but it’s a hard thing to introduce into polite conversation.

  “Come in,” she finally said.

  All the lights in the house were off, no activity.

  “Kind of spooky in here,” I said.

  “Everyone else has the week off,” she said.

  “That’s nice, I guess,” I said.

  “Here’s the newspaper,” she said, handing me a copy of the Tennessean. And there it was, the headline: fire mishap mars roberts confirmation.

  “Oh shit,” I said, looking at the picture of Jasper, his face both confused and furious, being hustled to the car, Madison right behind him. I looked for Timothy and Carl, but they must have already been inside the car.

  “Mmm,” Mary said, noncommittal, almost bored.

  “Did you see it on TV?” I asked.

  “I don’t watch television,” she replied.

  “You saw us yesterday, though,” I said. “In the yard? Bessie and Roland.”

  “I saw it, yes,” she replied.

  “That’s what happened to Timothy,” I told her.

  “I figured as much,” she said. I couldn’t tell if it was because of her position in the household, one of servitude, or if her natural demeanor simply wouldn’t allow the display of emotion for people who didn’t deserve it.

  I read the article, which repeated the official statement from Jasper Roberts, which was that a spark had caused Timothy’s shirt, which had been heavily starched in anticipation of the press conference, to momentarily catch on fire. The boy had been treated for minor burns, as had Madison, and released from the hospital that same day. It went on to state that Jasper would return to Tennessee so that Timothy could be seen by the family’s personal physician. And then, that was it. I flipped through the section, looking for more information, but there was nothing else. There was another article about what the implications were for national security, how Jasper would both continue the work of the previous secretary and build upon that work. I couldn’t believe that something so strange could be met with such an easy willingness to disbelieve that it had happened. A starched fucking shirt? Really?

  I grabbed the New York Times, but there was even less about Timothy, not even a picture at the press conference, instead an official portrait of Jasper. It was all so formal, all about policy, about governance. Who the fuck cared about that?

  “Did you know?” I asked Mary.

  She nodded.

  “Who told you?” I asked.

  “I saw it,” she finally said. “In this kitchen. I saw the little girl catch on fire.”

  “When they were still living here?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Just before Senator Roberts sent Mrs. Jane and the children away, when they were fighting all the time. The girl, Bessie. She came down and asked for something to eat. And then Senator Roberts came in and said that she couldn’t have anything until dinner. And she yelled that she was hungry. And Senator Roberts grabbed her arm and said that he made the rules, that he decided what was best for everyone in the family. She just burst into flames, and Senator Roberts jumped away. He stared at her. The smoke alarm started going off. I took a pitcher of water and poured it on the girl. Still on fire. I filled it up and poured it again. Still on fire. And then another. And she finally stopped burning, no more fire. And the girl looked completely fine, very red but not crying. Then Mrs. Jane shouted from the living room about the smoke alarm, and Senator Roberts said that I had burned a grilled cheese. Now, that I did not care for.”

  “Yeah, that sucks,” I replied.

  “He took the girl upstairs. When she came back down, wearing new clothes, her hair still damp, Senator Roberts was nowhere to be found, and she said that she’d like a grilled cheese. So I made her one. I made her two, I think. And that was it. Not long after, they were gone.”

  “Did Jasper ever talk to you about it?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I received a generous raise, though,” she said. “So much money.”

  “This family,” I said, shaking my head.

  “No worse than any other family,” Mary offered. She shrugged.

  “No,” I admitted, “maybe not.”

  “You want to keep the papers?” she asked. I remembered that the kids were back in the guesthouse, waiting for me.

  “Save them for Jasper,” I told her. “Maybe he’ll want them for his scrapbook.”

  “Will Timothy come live with us?” Roland asked.

  I hadn’t fully considered it. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe.” What would it matter? Another child in the bed, another set of lungs taking in air, holding it, and releasing it. I wondered if Jasper had fathered any children out of wedlock. Should a note be sent to the mothers of those children? A pamphlet? The guesthouse would become a home for wayward children who spontaneously combusted.

  It made me happy, after everyone had seemed so convinced that Jane was responsible, that it was Jasper’s fucked-up genes that had made this happen. It made sense to me, these privileged families turning inward, becoming incestuous, like old royalty. It was bound to happen. It was all on him. And yet it worried me a little, that if Jasper knew without a doubt that he made these fire children, what would he do to them? How much of himself did he see in them? Too much or too little seemed dangerous to me.

  We just waited for them to come home. I had no idea how long it took to drive from D.C. to Franklin, so we tried to go about our day, but whatever I came up with—math flash cards, Silly Putty, animal masks—I’d catch the kids staring off into space. Their skin was splotchy, warm to the touch, but the fire never came to the surface, as if they were holding on to it for when they really needed it. Or maybe they had burned themselves out the day before. I should have been keeping notes, doing scientific research, wearing safety goggles. There was so much that I should have been doing, that I could have been doing, but not a fucking thing made sense to me. I just fed them, made them wash their hands, listened to whatever nonsense they wanted to tell me. I took care of them, you know?

  We were outside on the basketball court just as dusk began, the light all red and golden and perfect. Bessie was trying to hit five free throws in a row, and when she did that, she made it six, then seven. She had a nice shot, a little janky, but we could work with it. Whenever she tracked down the ball after a miss, she practiced dribbling between her legs, taking these weird strides, keeping her head up like a general surveying the bat
tlefield. With her hair and her determined scowl, she looked like a punk rocker, like apocalypse basketball. Roland was on the other side of the court, throwing up underhanded free throws and hitting a lot of them, like Rick Barry, though the kid seemed to be putting no thought or effort into it, which, of course, also made me happy.

  I called them over for a game of H-O-R-S-E, the three of us lined up single file. Before they had time to blink, Roland was out and Bessie was at H-O-R- and I was pristine. I knew kids, just like adults, wanted to win at everything they ever did, but I thought this was good child rearing, to show them how difficult it is to be good at something, to rejoice when you made small improvements. The kids didn’t seem to mind, liked watching me line up the hardest shots and effortlessly knock them down.

  “How much longer is summer?” Bessie asked me.

  “Still a while to go,” I told her.

  “What will you do when it’s over?” she asked.

  “I haven’t thought about it,” I replied, and it was true that I really hadn’t. “I haven’t had time to think about it. I’ve been thinking about you guys.”

  “Where will you go?” she asked, not letting it go. “Will you stay here?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I’ll probably go back home.” I thought about my mom, that room in the attic, and I wanted to cry. But I had money now, though I hadn’t checked my bank account since I got here. I could get my own place. A decent apartment, something with windows, where normal people congregated.

  “Will you take care of some other kids?” Roland asked.

  “Probably not,” I said. “I’d probably hate them after being with you guys. They’d be so boring.”

  “They’d suck,” Bessie offered, helping me along. Roland nodded his approval; how could those kids be anything other than sucky?